7 Powerful Facebook Statistics You Should Know for a More Engaging Facebook Page

Jul 23, 2013 5 min readResearch
more engaging Facebook page - mobile

One of the things we focus on most at Buffer is the best time to post to Twitter and Facebook. This is because we want to help you get more engagement with your audience, which is beneficial for everyone.

While the best time to post is definitely important, there are some other things to keep in mind. I had a look at what kind of updates work best for Facebook pages to increase interaction and found 7 interesting statistics that you’ll probably find useful if you’re trying to make your page more engaging.

1. Photo posts get 39% more interaction

Not only do photo posts get more engagement than links, videos or text-based updates, they actually account for 93% of the most engaging posts on Facebook. According to Kissmetrics, photos get 53% more likes, 104% more comments and 84% more click-throughs on links than text-based posts. And as we’ve mentioned before, self-explanatory photos seem to perform best.

more engaging Facebook page - image posts

Wishpond’s data says that overall, photo posts get 120% more engagement than the average post, and photo albums actually get 180% more engagement. This was a surprising one for me, but it seems that if you have multiple images to share, you’d be better of putting them into a Facebook album than publishing separate photo posts.

more engaging Facebook page - hubspot image test

Especially Buffer’s new image posting feature let’s you right click any image on the web and then share it in full-size to your wall in seconds. No more downloading, uploading nightmare here.

2. Shorter posts get 23% more interaction

Writing shorter posts isn’t just handy on Twitter. Keeping your posts below 250 characters can get you 60% more engagement than you might otherwise see. You can even get up to 66% more engagement if you cut it down to less than 80 characters.

more engaging Facebook page - track social short posts

Either way, the result seems to be that getting to the point quickly and concisely works best. Perhaps that’s why Facebook fans like photo posts so much?

Especially looking at the overall Social Media statistics for other social networks, it’s really interesting how this stacks up to other platforms.

3. Using emoticons increases comments by 33%

If you thought emoticons were only for teens, you might want to rethink that idea. According to this AMEX OPEN Forum infographic, emoticons can make a big difference to your engagement rates. No only do posts with emoticons get 33% more comments, they also get shared 33% more often. Even better: they get liked 57% more often than posts without emoticons.

more engaging Facebook page - emoticons

Emoticons tend to add a more human side to your communications, and it seems like this comes across fairly well with users.

Engagement rates on Thursday and Friday are 18% higher

Compared to other days in the week, Buddymedia’s study found that engagement rates for Facebook are 18% higher on Thursdays and Fridays. As they put it, “the less people want to be at work, the more they are on Facebook!”

more engaging Facebook page - best day to post

The study also looked at different industries, including sports, retail, automotive and healthcare, to see which days worked best in each industry. Although they did vary, most of them sat around the end of the week, from Wednesday-Friday. Apparently no industry has users that are engaged on Mondays or Tuesdays!

To find out more about the best times to post to Facebook, we’ve also written an extensive guide that you might find useful.

5. Question posts get 100% more comments

If comments are the kind of interaction you’re after, questions might be the way to go. According to an infographic by Kissmetrics, they get 100% more comments than standard text-based posts. HubSpot shares a similar finding, although this data points out that question posts often get fewer likes and shares than other types of posts.

more engaging Facebook page - questions 1

What I found really interesting about this stat is that HubSpot’s data also shows which question words attract more comments, with the most popular being ‘should,’ ‘would,’ ‘which,’ and ‘who.’ This makes me think that closed questions which have a very limited answer option are the highest attractors of comments. Open question words like ‘why’ and ‘how’ which make the user think more to articulate their answer sit at the bottom of this chart.

more engaging Facebook page - questions 2

This is especially interesting an points to a stark change in marketing, turning the funnel upside down. In short: Keeping engagement high with your existing customers might be more important than trying to find new ones.

When we observe how most updates sent through Buffer perform, we found a similar pattern of greatly increased lift through questions being posted.

6. 35% of Facebook Fans like a page so they can participate in contests

If you’re chasing down new fans, a contest seems like a fairly good way to encourage likes. A report from earlier this year showed that 35% of Facebook fans liked Facebook pages specifically to compete in contests. Contests obviously solicit interaction by asking for people to enter. It turns out this can work, as ‘caption this photo’-style contests actually bring in 5.5 times more comments than regular posts.

In Buddymedia’s report, contest-related words like winner, win, entry, contest, enter and promotion were all more likely to engage users.

more engaging Facebook page - keywords

7. 42% of Fans like a page to get a coupon or discount

According to Socially Stacked, 42% of Facebook fans like a page in order to get a discount or coupon. A study by Wildfire Interactive showed that coupon-based campaigns received the highest engagement rates. Giveaways and sweepstakes came in just behind coupons as highly engaging post types.

more engaging Facebook page - coupons

Before I forget, if you’re a Buffer user, you can see analytics for Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn right from your dashboard!

In case you found this article helpful, the best follow-on posts for you to read are our complete guide to the latest Social Media statistics, as well as the latest Twitter statistics.

What have you observed has changed the most on Facebook in the last few months? I hope these statistics might be helpful to get your Facebook page on the right track!

Image credits: HubSpot 1 and 2, Track Social, Mashable, Bit Rebels, Buddymedia, Alex E. Proimos

Brought to you by

Try Buffer for free

140,000+ small businesses like yours use Buffer to build their brand on social media every month

Get started now

Related Articles

content research methods
FlowJul 5, 2023
Here's How I Research to Find Unique Angles For My Content

In this article, Nupur Mittal shares insights into four research methods that help her find content ideas and identify unique takeaways.

FacebookJan 10, 2019
What 777,367,063 Facebook Posts Tell Us About Successful Content in 2019 (New Research)

Facebook marketing in 2019 isn’t dead. On the contrary, it’s far from it. Now removed from the dim outlook that businesses faced at the beginning of 2018, Facebook has and will remain an essential tool for brands’ marketing strategies moving forward. In our big State of Social Media 2019 Report, we found that 93.7 percent of businesses use and are currently active on Facebook — the most among any other social media network. And although we continue to see a dramatic rise in the usage

140,000+ people like you use Buffer to build their brand on social media every month